Does everyone use Time of Use Electricity rates?

[Zythryn]

I’m keep going back and forth on adding a tou meter to my evse. Has anyone come to the conclusion that it doesn’t make sense for their use case?

One scenario we have is my wife does work stretches of over night shifts. She often times leaves early to run errands before her shift and she could be home after the window. So I could end up pay double on those weeks she’s working overnight.

Another scenario is just a heavy day of driving, drop kids off, go to work, leave work, pick up kids, home for a quick dinner, off to activities. 2-3 night are like this. I feel more comfortable being able to top up after we get home before we head out for the extra curriculars

@Beans4Me This varies wildly depending upon your utility.
I am also in MN. IF you have Xcel Energy, I would recommend not doing it. They have monthly flat charges that require a lot of miles before you come out ahead.

If you use Facebook, there is a Minnesota Tesla Club group & a MN EV Owners group that may be a better place to get advice specific to your utility.

One other thing, most off peak plans in MN include weekend and some holidays as ‘off-peak’. So you get some flexibility there.

 

[fholbert]

In SoCal (Camarillo) I signed up for TOU-D-PRIME. This specific TOU plan is for households with EV charging. The electric company came out to verify EV charging by looking at the electrical panel. Charging early morning or after 9PM works good for us.

They actually came to your house?

I signed up in May, didn't hear any more about it.

 

[zoomer0056]

They actually came to your house?

I signed up in May, didn't hear any more about it.

I didn't see them. When I called they said they had to verify I had a charging set up. I asked if they need to come into the garage to see the wall connector. They said no, said they only needed to look inside the electrical panel on the outside of the house. I don't know if they came or not. But my electric plan was switched over the next billing period. If they looked in the panel, they saw a 60Amp fuze labeled Tesla. I guess that's proof enough.

 

[RichBenn]

I am on TOU. I used to pay a little over 5 cents/Kwh at night, but it recently doubled! That, and a particularly onerous summer daytime schedule that now costs 40 cents from 3 p.m. to 9 pm has me wanting to go back on a regular schedule. It’s only a couple cents more than the night time rate!

i kind of wondered when this would happen. In the old days, utilities would have base power units, like steam turbines or combined cycle units, which ran day and night. They are more efficient, but takes up to a day to start and stop these things. They can’t be added to the grid quickly to meet peak power demands during the day.

Peaker units, like natural gas turbines, are fired up daily when the sun shines. Businesses and air conditioning units demand more. Gas turbines cost more to operate, so there was an incentive for “shifting” time of use. But now, with way more daytime solar generation and many people already on TOU, those incentives don’t help many utilities as much. At least that’s the scene here.

Really, whether you do TOU or not depends upon where you live, your local utility rate policy, and your personal usage.

 

[DanDi58]

Here in Central NJ, they are just getting around to installing smart meters - I just got a letter about this last week. Looking forward to that. Not sure whether PSE&G even offers a TOU plan. I currently have my car set up to charge starting at 10:30 pm, using my 240v outlet and mobile charger. I'd consider a TOU plan if offered, but you also need to take into account whether or not they charge a monthly fee to be on the TOU plan. I've read that some utilities do that, which make make the plan less advantageous.

 

[mjwojtukiewicz]

Here in Central NJ, they are just getting around to installing smart meters - I just got a letter about this last week. Looking forward to that. Not sure whether PSE&G even offers a TOU plan. I currently have my car set up to charge starting at 10:30 pm, using my 240v outlet and mobile charger. I'd consider a TOU plan if offered, but you also need to take into account whether or not they charge a monthly fee to be on the TOU plan. I've read that some utilities do that, which make make the plan less advantageous.

PSEG Long Island is about 26 cents all day. The TOU plans jump to high 40 cent range from 3-7 or 4-9pm. I plan to stay on flat rate

 

[davewill]

The Tesla app supports time of use billing. You could configure the app for TOU, and pretend you are on TOU for a month to see where you are at the end compared to a month not on TOU. Personally, I generally manage to get 100% of my charging on the lowest rate, but your situation may be different.

 

[Tronguy]

Heh. Well, NJ has both TOU billing available, not to mention Regular Residential Billing, but, if one has a smart connector (like a Tesla Gen 3 wall connector and similar) that can talk to the utility mothership, one can get a reduced rate for charging the car, never mind the time of day.

But I don't bother with any of that. Got solar on the roof with Net Metering.. and I generate enough excess energy in the year that, other than a $6 a month connection fee, we hardly ever pay the electric company for energy. And if one counts the SRECs, we make enough money from the subsidy and all so that money comes in, not out, over a year's time. Electric cars or no electric cars.

 

[Calliope]

I was on the "standard" TOU in Ontario, and recently switched to ULO use (as in a previous post) - electricity between 11 pm and 7 am is 2.3 cents per kWh. When I did some calculations, it should save me about $15-20 per month because half of my electricity use goes to my car. I can see that in a different household situation, it wouldn't work as well - every home and family is a different situation.

 

[Iron]

TOU works well for me. They came out and swapped my meter. I have a Tesla wall connector and I charge at 48A.

Peak rates run June thru early Sept, Mon-Fri, 3pm-8pm. All other times including weekends, the whole winter etc. is off peak.
-------------
RATE - MONTHLY

Service Charge	@	$25.00 per month
All kWh of Off-Peak Energy	@	$0.046 per kWh
All kWh of On-Peak Energy	@	$0.150 per kWh

----------

I have it set so it completes charging to leave by early morning. I saved further by installing an AC window unit in my bedroom. The wife likes to keep it freezing at night. The rest of the house is normal temp. My electric bill has gone down since I got my EV.

 

[golferguy]

TOU works for me in Florida, because I have 2 Tesla's. If I had only one, unless I drove 100+ miles every day I would not recommend it. But with 2 EV's, it works out well.

 

[SalisburySam]

We’ve had a smart meter for about a decade, but there are no TOU rates tariffed for residences in our area. Current rate is about 11¢.

 

[DanDi58]

TOU works well for me. They came out and swapped my meter. I have a Tesla wall connector and I charge at 48A.

Peak rates run June thru early Sept, Mon-Fri, 3pm-8pm. All other times including weekends, the whole winter etc. is off peak.
-------------
RATE - MONTHLY

Service Charge	@	$25.00 per month
All kWh of Off-Peak Energy	@	$0.046 per kWh
All kWh of On-Peak Energy	@	$0.150 per kWh

----------

I have it set so it completes charging to leave by early morning. I saved further by installing an AC window unit in my bedroom. The wife likes to keep it freezing at night. The rest of the house is normal temp. My electric bill has gone down since I got my EV.

So I guess even with the monthly charge (which is ridiculous that they do that) it's still cheaper to use the TOU.... Good to know.

 

[fhteagle]

My local electric co-op has a flat rate all day every day. We're at $0.134 / kWh last I checked, + $0.01/kWh voluntarily paid to the "Totally Green" program, plus $28/month access charge. Very reasonable in my opinion.

But they are making a lot of noise about trying to get usage down between 4 and 9pm. I finally got someone who works at the co-op to spill the beans about how bad the demand charges are from Tri-State Generation and Transmission, the source of ~95% of the co-op's purchased power. Basically, if they were to try to re-capture the demand charges in only the time period that triggers the demand charges, those rates would be 6-7x higher for that time period. They could / would / should lower the energy charge the rest of the day though, to maybe something like $0.09-$0.10/kWh range If they do shift to that kind of pricing, buying fixed storage batteries for the house and/or bidirectional charging capable EVSEs becomes a no brainer.

 

[Iron]

The Tesla app supports time of use billing. You could configure the app for TOU, and pretend you are on TOU for a month to see where you are at the end compared to a month not on TOU. Personally, I generally manage to get 100% of my charging on the lowest rate, but your situation may be different.

Correct. I wish the Tesla app was a bit more granular. I have my off peak entered as $0.05 because I had to round up... it wouldn't accept .046. As you can see, all my charging is done at home off-peak. I've never plugged in anywhere else. I've never even seen a supercharger much less used one. Well, I lie.... it was charging on one at the Tesla SC when I took delivery.

$129 total to charge the MY since February. Actually a bit less, since I had to round up the rate in the app.

Telsa bases their "savings" calculation is based off an ICE vehicle that gets 25 mpg. My truck was getting 13-14 mpg! I'm saving much more than stated here.

So I guess even with the monthly charge (which is ridiculous that they do that) it's still cheaper to use the TOU.... Good to know.

Yep, at least for me, anyway. Everyone's situation and rates are different. I would suggest to anyone that has a narrow off-peak window in which to charge, get yourself a wall connector and charge at 48A. Also use the "ready to depart at" or scheduled charging so it doesn't accidentally charge as soon as you plug in. Those methods also ensure your car is not sitting with a high SOC.

 

[RonAz]

I have a friend that lives in Chelan County Washington. I just checked online and the rate for residential is 2.7 cents/kwh. Not sure why everyone there doesn't drive an electric vehicle.
Where I live I have the EV Plan that gives cheapest rates between 11:00 pm and 5:00 am. 7.7-7.9 cents/kwh depending on time of year.

 

[exfed2001]

Here in Central NJ, they are just getting around to installing smart meters - I just got a letter about this last week. Looking forward to that. Not sure whether PSE&G even offers a TOU plan. I currently have my car set up to charge starting at 10:30 pm, using my 240v outlet and mobile charger. I'd consider a TOU plan if offered, but you also need to take into account whether or not they charge a monthly fee to be on the TOU plan. I've read that some utilities do that, which make make the plan less advantageous.

They do have a TOU plan, but it requires an EnergyStar EVSE, which means no 240 volt plug-in Granny type chargers. It gets you about a 10.5 cent rate reduction from PSE&G from 9P to 7A and all day on weekends. My usual rate runs between about 18 and 21 cents/kWh as it stands.

All I use/need at home is 240/16A for my existing wiring which is already permitted and inspected (1993) so I use a Webasto plug-in. As it is, I mostly use a cheap level 2 at the park where I exercise every morning so it likely would not be a big payoff for me to buy a PSE&G approved EVSE and take advantage of the Federal tax credit and the $250 rebate from the PDRNJ. I'd have to take out the 6-20 receptacle and hard wire the EVSE and all that for 16 amps. Might have to pull a new permit and inspection, too.

The program also requires that the EVSE or your vehicle has WiFi capability to send data to their vendor so that they can adjust the billing.

Still thinking and running the numbers.

 

[DanDi58]

They do have a TOU plan, but it requires an EnergyStar EVSE, which means no 240 volt plug-in Granny type chargers. It gets you about a 10.5 cent rate reduction from PSE&G from 9P to 7A and all day on weekends. My usual rate runs between about 18 and 21 cents/kWh as it stands.

All I use/need at home is 240/16A for my existing wiring which is already permitted and inspected (1993) so I use a Webasto plug-in. As it is, I mostly use a cheap level 2 at the park where I exercise every morning so it likely would not be a big payoff for me to buy a PSE&G approved EVSE and take advantage of the Federal tax credit and the $250 rebate from the PDRNJ. I'd have to take out the 6-20 receptacle and hard wire the EVSE and all that for 16 amps. Might have to pull a new permit and inspection, too.

The program also requires that the EVSE or your vehicle has WiFi capability to send data to their vendor so that they can adjust the billing.

Still thinking and running the numbers.

Ah ok. I have been using a 240v outlet I had installed and the Mobile Charger since day one.

 

[batboy]

I’m keep going back and forth on adding a tou meter to my evse. Has anyone come to the conclusion that it doesn’t make sense for their use case?

One scenario we have is my wife does work stretches of over night shifts. She often times leaves early to run errands before her shift and she could be home after the window. So I could end up pay double on those weeks she’s working overnight.

Another scenario is just a heavy day of driving, drop kids off, go to work, leave work, pick up kids, home for a quick dinner, off to activities. 2-3 night are like this. I feel more comfortable being able to top up after we get home before we head out for the extra curriculars

I see that you are in MN. If you have Xcel as your energy provider, you have another option. They have a program called EV Accelerate at home that allows you to purchase a charging unit from that that does all the metering. Take a look

 

[AtomMoose]

I see that you are in MN. If you have Xcel as your energy provider, you have another option. They have a program called EV Accelerate at home that allows you to purchase a charging unit from that that does all the metering. Take a look

A third option: Xcel’s Optimize your Charge program, for a $50 annual bill credit.

We use our existing Tesla wall connector with this program. Xcel uses evPulse to authenticate with our Tesla account and verify we primarily charge between 11pm and 7am.

ETA: They don’t count energy use for preconditioning. I can pull 48A midday to heat up the car and their website still shows 100% charging during “smart times”. IIRC only something like 30% of usage has to occur during “smart times” to qualify. Nothing stops the car from charging outside of “smart times” if you tell it to. It’s entirely passive.

Their API calls don’t wake the vehicle in my experience.